LOVE’S SWEET BREATH

"White Mane" by Donna Bernstein, (Used with Permission; www.donnabernstein.com)

I’ve been in development. The chaff is shaken from my life. What mattered was engagement and being there: for others, animals, world; and yes, for me.

Okay, maybe that’s the crux. Despite efforts to the contrary, my needs were put on the “back burner.” I’ve been in a shift for years.

When my body first got sick, this lesson came: “Be she who is Sacrificed, Martyred or be the Server.” With early life training in the first two, I thought I had transformed.

As samskaras go, this complex was formidable. (Samskaras: Sanskrit word meaning inherited previous-life tendencies that are the psyche’s impressions.) It was quite a storm.

This past year has found me receiving. Receiving love, grace, gifts, generosities, acknowledgement, wisdom and encouragement.

A week ago, I found a gift of desert-colored socks in my mailbox...along with a beautiful card with a horse on the front. My friend wrote: "Let this gift be a symbol of a universal law; 'Ask and you shall receive.'”

Dan Fogelberg wrote this in a song: “Changing horses in the middle of a stream gets you old.” That’s true. It gets you worn and hungry, too. And through others’ love and faith in me, it's getting me free. Old, it turns out, is a temporary condition.

I once saw my life five to fifteen years out and was given road maps. Now I sense opaque openings of light and hope that guide me into new moments.

Before, my practice was breathe in and breathe out. Notice. Be aware. Imbue uplifting passages into my mind and heart. Discover my place of belonging. Relish relationship harmony.

Now it is different. Breathe in and breathe out is not mine to do. It does. I allow. My highest calling is love. Love to me. Love to you. Love to our world. Love to the cranky neighbor who complains. Love to the Navaho Nation, the trees, animals and their people:

http://www.naztoday.com/news/assayii-lake-fire-update----june-p-m/article9987e6d4-f697-11e3-b0a9-0017a43b2370.html

Love to people who curse life. Love to those who don't. Love to family. Love to birthdays. Love to animal stewards. Love to those who kill. Love to the peacemakers. Love to organizations hoarding money. Love to new work honored. Love to wading into new pools together.

I wrote this poem in praise of this fresh air that is blowing through me:

Winds Countenance

Winds countenance

Deliberate, swaying,

Gentle in freshness

Of airs

Wiser than I it seems

Who lies best

Happily always

Fully embraced

By penetrating heat

Of Mother Sun

The wind awakens me

This hour

To freshness of day

Hints of dewdrops

An invitation to climb

Wind calls me from my place of rest,

Covered as though I am

In spiritual words that drink me

I know their cup of

Freshness needed

Reawakening vast souls,

In modern light

Hopkins, Chief Seattle, Jane

Goodall, Thoreau, Emmett Fox

Twelve steps, twenty and eight

No wonder I need breeze

Welcomed stirrings

To pull me out

From my den

My old life passed on to where all incarnations go when complete. So did the personality structure that housed it. Chunks of me disappeared. I do not need to divorce or harm my ego to gain new ground. That is not the way.

LOVE is the STRONGEST of all POWERS...ego, fully embraced, gives way as rivers merge into the SEA. Love is bigger than all negative conversations, images and events.

We need a renaissance. That is what I learned, stripped down. We don’t need to fight for the animals, the world or ourselves. We all do need infusions of love.  

How about you, Reader? When has your life been stripped down, transformed? When you were infused with the sweet breath of fresh air?

IN THE NAME OF LOVE: Let The Bees Be

In the name of love, we need to find better ways.

The other day, with sweltering heat engulfing me (which is my favorite), I sat for just a bit in the sun at the local pool. I was ready to dive into my book, Beyond Innocence, Autobiography In Letters by Jane Goodall.

Instead, a neighbor greeted me. Our conversation led one thing into the other. One of my neighbor’s friends hurried down the steps to plunge in. I was standing on the other steps, readying myself to enter the cool waters.  In that moment, a bee stung me. Not just “ouch”, but time out for reflection.

When I had Lyme disease, I was highly allergic to bee stings. After a few words with the women at the pool, I went back home. While I have been stung only a few times, it was my first sting in a while. I had the meds, anyway, and I used them. Safety first. Epinephrine or homeopathic high dose remedies? I chose the latter. I was breathing easily, no headache, and the swelling on my arm, while near my heart, was not a balloon. Great! I am truly no longer allergic. Yippee!

While dashing about, I recalled my conversation with the three women before I left the pool. It was about African bees. In “Trip To Chimfunshi,” I describe the outbreak of bees into what was to be a notable relocation of baby chimpanzees. And notable, it became. http://namasteglobalvision.s3-website-us-east 1.amazonaws.com/NamasteTriptoChimfunshi%20copy.pdf 

What most disheartened me about the sting started at the pool. Even in the face of my calm demeanor, one woman wanted to drown the bees. Wow, how quickly the conversation turned to ’killing as the first solution'.  http://consultingforpassion.blogspot.com/2014/05/choosing-to-live-and-let-live.html

In the name of love, if we are going to put an end to the killing paradigm, we must find better ways. [1] 

I did not start out to write about bees but about other loving solutions. Because of that day, and the communications since, the bees leave Jane Goodall and her contribution in wait. http://www.janegoodall.org/study-corner-biography   So, bees it is.

The loss of bees was so important in 2011 that the keynote speaker, Ariana Stozzi, introduced the bees into our International Big Sky Horse Conference. By 2011, bees were a global concern. http://www.earthaction.org/2012/02/ccd.html 

So how is the world responding?  PBS Nature is offering a positive way. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/silence-of-the-bees/how-can-you-help-the-bees/36/ 

Another way comes from: “We Save Bees”. What a loving solution.Visit groups like: http://honeylove.org/rescuebees/ and  http://www.wesavebees.com/.

One year, I did find a local beekeeper who removed bees and a nest from my home. Neither the beekeeper nor I were stung.  The bees were happy and continued to live.

Dear Reader, are you willing to explore? What is one practice you will engage in that sustains life in our precious ecosystem?

As for me, I close with an old favorite of mine from the intrepid “Sixties”:

Happiness runs in a circular motion.

Everyone is a part of everything anyway.

You can have everything if you let yourself be.

                                                     Donovan

[1] When I went to Africa, I did not realize how Apis Mellifica was made. Bees are killed in its preparation. Two homeopathic remedies for bee stings (vegetarian, not vegan), are Sulfur and Histaminum. Epi, of course, involves animal experimentation that both harms and kills animals.